Kester Brewin

Nick Clegg – Deputy Prime Minister – has travelled to Pakistan to ‘see for himself’ the horrific destruction that the recent flooding has caused. It annoys me that politicians always feel the need to do this, especially when environmental issues are involved. Everyone has to fly off and see the melting polar ice caps for themselves to ‘prove their green credentials.’ Not content to see the images of chaos and suffering, political leaders have to fly half way round the world to ‘see for themselves.’ I can understand politicians within Pakistan needing to go and visit, I can understand Obama needing to go to the gulf of Mexico, I can see why Bush not going straight to New Orleans was wrong.

But imagine if a leading figure from each nation had to fly with their entourage to ‘see for themselves’ what had happened when disaster struck. It becomes absurd. Especially given that these floods, hurricanes and melting ice are caused by global warming which is itself caused by the huge increase in human movement – flying in particular.

Though I am critical of the ‘virtual world’ in many ways, I think it’s also hugely beneficial: people can experience something of other areas without having to travel, without having to add tonnes of carbon emissions to confirm for themselves what must be patently true anyway. Did Clegg doubt the scale of the disaster until he’d seen it for himself? Did he not trust the television pictures or the words of his civil servants?

I’m reminded of Jesus’ words to Thomas – the disciple who had to physically witness his resurrection before he would believe:

“Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”

I wish more people would take that line when it came to being able to act compassionately in the face of terrible disasters.

In conversation with… Kester Brewin from Greenbelt Festival on Vimeo.

Fantastic time at Greenbelt. Was brilliant to meet up with old friends and have some time to catch up. It was also really good to be able to speak about ‘Other’ and engage with people about the ideas that it throws up. I hope that those who came to the talks or just bought the book will find their way here and continue the conversations about pirates, violence, prison, TAZ, institutions and all the other stuff we managed to cram into the debate!

If you didn’t manage to pick the book up at the festival, then you can get it on Amazon here. Be great to hear people’s thoughts if they want to leave reviews on the site too. I’m still really excited about the ideas in the book and want to get them out to as wide an audience as possible, so do recommend it if you feel able to. The above is one of a number of little interviews I did around the site at various points, which will be uploaded to Greenbelt’s media section over the next few months.

An imperfect argument, I’m sure. But some powerful words here that we’d all do well to heed. It’s 20 mins long, but well worth a listen – especially in his plea to see theological nonsenses like purgatory for what they are – unbiblical, manipulative crap. His conclusion that Jesus would be cast out of the vaulted halls of the Vatican is strong stuff indeed, and resonates with Phillip Pullman’s words that I blogged about in The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ.

The Intelligence² Debate – Stephen Fry (Unedited)
Uploaded by Xrunner17. – Full seasons and entire episodes online.

Absolutely fascinating programme on BBC Radio 4, looking at the cases of Sidney Bradford and Mike May, both of whom lost their sight very early in life, and were then lucky enough to be able to have it restored years later.

What is it like to grow up blind, and then be able to see again? One might think it would be happy and miraculous. But in the case of Sidney Bradford, it was far more complex. ‘He was a very successful blind person, who became a rather disabled seeing person.’ Having fantasised about seeing for so long, the visual world, when it finally opened up to him, was a huge disappointment. He became clinically depressed, and died only two years after his sight was restored.

Sight, it would seem, is not the ability to see, but the ability to understand and comprehend the visual information that is presented to us. “Without accumulating visual experience from which the brain can make sense of what the eyes see, vision is of little use.”

Like all good radio, I’ve been left with lots of interesting thoughts which need some time to process. If Jesus did restore Bartimaeus’ sight, did he do anything to help him cope with this trauma of seeing? Indeed, after all of these miraculous changes that we read in the gospels – people being brought back to life, cured of life-long illnesses – there’s little sense of the huge pastoral task that Bradford’s case suggests should be in place to bring people to genuine wholeness.

May has been more successful at coping with his new sighted life. But has also had to deal with disappointment. Seeing was the be-all-and-end-all that he hoped for. When it came, he realised it was only one sense among many, and he was far better using the special skills he had learned as a blind person to help him to continue to negotiate this strange world that ‘crammed so close to my eyeballs.’

The report into the horrific bombings in the village of Claudy in 1972 – in which 9 people were killed – has been published today. It appears to make sickening reading: The Police Ombudsman found talks between the Catholic Church, the police and the government led to a priest suspected of involvement in the attack [...]

Just got back from a couple of weeks holiday where I took a proper break from posting. Space to think about other stuff really, and ‘Devon’ and ‘Wireless Network’ are not immediately at home in the same sentence yet. This weekend I’ll be off to Greenbelt, where I’m doing two talks expanding on some of [...]

Being in that part of the UK for holiday, and hearing on the grapevine that a few people are interested in exploring the thinking I’ve been doing around Hakim Bey’s work on pirates and TAZ, I thought I’d round up a few things here… Firstly, the series of posts I did on ‘A Plea for [...]

Going to be away for a couple of weeks, so won’t be posting much… I will be in Devon though, which is good pirate territory, so who knows what timbers might get shivered. I’m going to be speaking at Greenbelt at the end of August, and very much looking forward to engaging in the ideas [...]

Fascinating series of images in The Daily Telegraph. Using an electron microscope, scientists have taken photographs (then recoloured) of bugs and insects… and it’s amazing just how ‘monstrous’ they look. It’s as if the human unconscious has its own microscope which has always been aware of these bizarre life-forms, which are so similar to the [...]

Very interesting report today in the Telegraph that NASA have detected a large solar flare erupting from the sun – which is likely to cause some spectacular displays of the northern and southern lights. These ‘coronal mass injections’ are actually a source of immense worry for disaster planners, as the largest eruption could result in [...]